Friday Musical Interlude - Gimme Shelter

The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter from 1969's Let It Bleed.

Breaking: Q4 2014 GDP revised to 2.4%

That's a drop from 3.2%  in the original estimate.  2.4% is a weak number and marks a deceleration from Q3 in the U.S.  By contrast the Canadian Q4 GDP revision went up from 2.6% to 2.9%.

Thursday Hillary Bash - Cult

Hillary Clinton's cult of personality?  Those who fell under the Obama spell and fell prey to his cult of personality, might possibly not want to do the same thing again.  So claims a prominent South Carolina Democrat.

"Is Hillary ready for Hillary? That's the question," said former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, who said he plans to support Biden if he runs. "Is it a political organization or a fan club for a boy band? I just don't understand the idea that somehow you've got to encourage her to run. Either people want to run and have a coherent message about why they should be president, or not. She has been around the block. She knows that if she wants to run, she can get in and get the money."

"I think it's a cult, not a political movement," Harpootlian added. "Ready for Hillary compared to who? The field still has to develop."

Now, you have to take anything from a Biden supporter with a grain of salt.  But Ready For Hillary seems to be kinda cultish, or at least a fan club as Harpootlian put it.  With recent polls suggesting a lot of Obama supporters might have buyer's remorse over his election and/or re-election, Harpootlian is smartly laying some groundwork for the approach to derail Hillary's possible quest for the presidency.  To position her as a cult of personality candidate dovetails perfectly with those who feel like they fell for an empty suit in Obama.  The cult of personality is what worked for Obama.  If you feel betrayed by that, having the same thing being tagged to Clinton works in Biden's favor.

Dude, are you serious?

The road to nowhere.

President Obama, failing to see the irony in his own actions, has let Republicans out of his trap.  That is, if he even realizes that he had set a trap for them yesterday.  I was quite sure the president wanted to get Republicans on record as opposing budget cuts with Hagel's crazy plan for military cuts earlier this week.  That, in order to prepare for the upcoming midterm elections by having the GOP say no to spending cuts that the GOP insists are necessary to save the republic.

But the president did not give Republicans a chance to vote down his proposed military cuts before he gave the GOP a way out of the trap today.

Just two days after the Pentagon outlined major cuts to the U.S. Army and other military programs, President Obama is calling for a whopping $300 billion commitment for America's roads, bridges and mass transit systems -- though as much as half comes from a tax plan that has bleak prospects on the Hill.

The president talked about the stimulus-style plan during a stop Wednesday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn. Officials say the money, as proposed, largely would come from "pro-growth business tax reform." But aside from the challenges in pushing tax reform, Obama could have a hard time making the sell when his military leaders, just days ago, were complaining about the budget crunch.

I was giving the president too much credit yesterday as a political machinations wizard.  He's just an ideologue, pure and simple.  He just wants less military, and instead more public works jobs that support unions, government spending and really aren't even all that necessary.

Besides the transparent liberal ideology, how exactly is Obama intending to sell this, when juxtaposed with his cutbacks to national defense at a time when that isn't exactly prudent? He isn't going to be successful no matter how hard he tries.  He fails to see the irony in his actions.  He's no political genius, except perhaps when it comes to getting elected (and even that is suspect).  The proof that his political skills are weak came today in the form of a 1-2 punch - the first to Republicans two days ago, today to his own face.  Laughable.

Hey America! You and what army?

Chuck your liberal stripes are showing. 

Chuck Hagel, the indefensible Defense Secretary of the United States, realizes that the United States is facing unprecedented international challenges and existential threats.  His solution?  Gut the military.  I mean, really gut it.  Yeah, that'll work.

Via Yahoo News:

Saying it was time to "reset" for a new era, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recommended shrinking American forces from 520,000 active duty troops to between 440,000 and 450,000.

In a speech outlining the proposed defense budget, he said Monday that after Iraq and Afghanistan, US military leaders no longer plan to "conduct long and large stability operations."

If approved by Congress, the Pentagon move would reduce the army to its lowest manning levels since 1940, before the American military dramatically expanded after entering World War II.

Don't expect Congress to go along with this. The question though is how Hagel sees the logic in this.  The explanation lies in this bit:

The Pentagon had previously planned to downsize the ground force to about 490,000.

But Hagel warned that to adapt to future threats "the army must accelerate the pace and increase the scale of its post-war drawdown."

There's the problem. Hagel thinks that to face future threats, the army must be weakened. There is no logic in this. The last time America''s military was as small as Hagel wants it to be, what happened? Pearl Harbor happened.

This is not to say that in order to get America's burgeoning debt under control that military spending cuts don't need to play a part, they do. But Hagel is being disingenuous when he says that smaller means stronger. It simply doesn't. Being Secretary of Defense his role is to argue for the strongest, most effective military force possible. He is abdicating his responsibility arguing any other position. Especially when he is doing so in such a transparently ineffective fashion.

All of that without even getting into the economic impact of reducing military personnel, shutting bases, mothballing aircraft etc.  There will be serious consequences if this happens.  my suspicion though is that the Obama administration doesn't want this to happen anyway.  It's all about getting Republican's on record for opposing spending cuts after they have been howling for years about Obama's profligate spending.  With his tried and true approach of throwing it back at Republicans and saying they have offered no alternatives (the same canard he keeps using on Obamacare), he can argue to voters going into the midterm elections that this is proof that Republicans don't mean what they say.  That's a powerful weapon to help stem the tide of a possible electoral bloodbath for Democrats in Congress.  With a complicit media, it might work.

Sochi Security holds up, but...

It looks like the Sochi Olympics went off without a hitch as far as security goes.  That's a good thing.  If a police state like the son of the Soviet Union that Russia has become can't stop terror attacks, what chance would we in the West have where searching nuns would be frowned upon (or should be)?

Just asking.

Of course we should have suspected all along that security would not be the issue at the Sochi Olympics. Transparency is another thing.  Graft it seems, was what built the entire venue;

“The Sochi Olympics are an unprecedented thieves’ caper,” says former deputy prime minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. He claims that some $26-billion in phony costs may have been creamed off by contractors, many of whom are Putin cronies.

But it doesn't end there.  There's also the issue of padding Russian results with more or better medals.

When Adelina Sotnikova of Russia won the gold medal in women's figure skating over South Korea's Yuna Kim on Thursday night, it was the signature moment of the Sochi Games for the host nation. For many skating fans, however, it was a serious injustice. With&nbsp accusations of inflated scores for Russian skaters and several judges having  questionable backgrounds, Sotnikova's win has been seen as both the skate of her life and a potential injustice towards Kim.

Is Russia concerned about efforts to overturn the gold medal?  I'm just asking but really, in a rhetorical way this time.

And then there's the issue of Russia's intolerance of gay rights. I guess Putin counted on the protests to quietky disappear once the games got underway.  It turns out, he was right.

...the only really noticeable pro-gay act inside Olympic Park came when Italian Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender gay rights activist, showed up at a women's hockey game in a rainbow skirt after broadcasting that she planned a protest. Police removed her from the park. A day earlier police detained her briefly after she unfurled a "gay is okay" banner outside the park.

So what happened?

"I really have already voiced my opinion and spoken out," said U.S. figure skater Ashley Wagner, responding to questions from reporters. Wagner has been outspoken in her criticism of the Russian laws. "My stand against the LGBT legislation here in Russia is really the most that I can do right now," she said. "I'm here to compete first and foremost."

Is Russia going to be penalized by the international community for this sort of approach the way a politician anywhere else in the world might be?  Just asking.

With all of this going on in a sporting environment, can you imagine what Putin is trying to do behind the scenes with respect to the situation in the Ukraine, no matter what president Obama exhorts Russia to do or not do?

Again, just asking.